Labour can be proud of its record in office and still offers the best way forward for Britain, Harriet Harman tells Cary Gee
Harriet Harman’s offices, situated at the end of a very long corridor on the edge of the parliamentary estate, are busier than most. Staffed by a veritable colony of secretaries, advisors and unspecified functionaries, this hive-like atmosphere – with Harman at its centre – can probably be explained by the fact that the boss does not have one job to perform, but three.
On the door, a discreet handwritten sign announces: “Leader of the House of Commons”, but Harman is also deputy leader of the Labour Party, as well as minister for women and equalities.
We meet to talk about Harman’s career-long fight to build a fairer, more equal society, which resulted in the publication in April of the Equality Bill, weighing in at a hefty 250 pages, but first, as Parliament prepares for its summer recess, I ask her for an end-of-term report.
Harman takes a deep breath. “We have been affected by two massive challenges, the like of which come along once in a generation. It is hard to overstate the size of the challenges to which has the Government has had to respond.
“We have had the global economy in meltdown and heading into uncharted territory. When this began, nobody knew where it was going to end. Gordon Brown was clear from the outset that we were not going to do what George Bush did, which was to allow something like Lehman Brothers to collapse. We were never going to let the banks go under. We acted to restore confidence and protect depositors. Second, we were not going to wait and see people lose their jobs – see perfectly good businesses fail and repossessions spiral out of control. That was a major decision and the right decision.”
It was also one that had the “full backing” of the Cabinet, but not of the Conservative Opposition. Harman is at pains to point out that David Cameron opposed the Government every step of the way.
“What we did was a bold, brave and fundamentally important thing to do. If I were scoring the Government’s response to the global economic recession, I would score it very highly indeed. That doesn’t mean that no one is suffering. They most certainly are. Hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs. People are worried. But it could have been much, much worse.”
Harman claims to have figures that show just how much worse it would have been if the Government had followed the Tories’ “do-nothing” policies, but is unwilling to share them.
The conventional wisdom is that Labour has not governed well over the past year. “But we saved Northern Rock and changed the law which enabled us to save the Dunfermline Building Society in a single weekend. We now have the powers to prevent these things happening again.”
While Harman admits some policies have had to be sidelined as a result of the economy’s travails, she stresses that there was no other choice. And unsurprisingly she has no truck with the suggestion that Brown’s excessive borrowing landed us in this mess in the first place.
“When the private sector pulled out of the construction industry, for example, there was no choice but for the public sector to step in. You have to borrow money for the public sector to do that. You can’t increase taxes, because that would mean taking money out of the economy.”
When I ask about her personal highlight of the past 12 months, Harman refers immediately to the G20. “To be part of the team Gordon led to take the whole of the world economy forward – I thought that was massively impressive.
“In terms of my work, it was the publication of the Equality Bill and trying to put things right after the expenses scandal. The public thinks we set our own expenses and then lean on officials in order to make an over-generous interpretation which favours us. We will now put this on an independent footing. We have also been given an opportunity to strengthen the role of Parliament in the future.”
On the Equality Bill, she regards the fact that companies employing more than 250 people will be forced to publish details of their gender pay gap as hugely important. “Transparency is a massive lever for change. As is positive action, for instance when selecting parliamentary candidates to address the under-representation of minorities”
She is well aware that the bill has yet to progress through Parliament. “There is an awful lot of work to do.”
That seems to be a familiar Labour refrain. An opinion poll following the catastrophic European and local elections and before last weekend’s gay pride celebrations (which saw an ungainly scramble among Labour and the Tories to position themselves as the party of gay equality) indicated that Labour is still losing ground to the Conservatives. Five per cent of gay voters in London even voted for the British National Party. Harman is unable to mask her anger or scorn at suggestions that Cameron’s Tories are now the true party of equality.
“The Equality Bill was the only piece of legislation Gordon mentioned at conference last year. I would remind the gay community that the Tories voted against the bill, which requires the public sector to act on its treatment of gay people. The Tories are just against equality. They are making incursions towards gay equality and Cameron tries to trade on his metrosexuality – a kind of detoxified Toryism. It’s nothing of the sort.”
She sees no difference between Cameron and others in his party.
“He is the leader. He takes responsibility for voting for tax cuts for the rich, for voting to allow employers to opt-out of paying the national minimum wage. Have no illusions. When it comes to votes in the Commons, the Tories remain profoundly reactionary.”
It was widely reported that Harman, in her dual roles as Leader of the Commons and equalities minister, was strongly in favour of all-black shortlists for parliamentary selections, yet the idea seems to have been dropped at the last moment.
Not so, says Harman, drawing attention to a short clause in the bill that provides for “positive discrimination” when selecting a candidate. In effect, this leaves the matter in the hands of constituency parties, which “have greater provision to take positive action under the law than there has hitherto been”.
Does this go as far as Harman originally intended? “I’ve always said that we have to take action. If we are to will the end, we have to will the means. It is always the case that you need a consensus within the party and within government. In this case, there was not a consensus within the party or within government to agree to all-black shortlists.”
She makes a comparison with all-women shortlists, pointing out that whereas women were in favour of these, there has been some disquiet about all-black short lists among black and ethnic minority Labour members.
She sees the provision for positive action as a first step, acknowledging that something must be done to increase ethnic representation and indicating that, if this does not work, the issue will be looked at again. She believes new Commons Speaker John Bercow is fully committed to the equality agenda.
Also of vital importance is the number of women in government. Although Harman declines to comment on the recent high-profile resignations of several women from the Government, she says that more women are needed in senior roles – “not because any particular woman has a right to be in government, but because the country needs women in government to deliver for other women. Policies such as Sure Start, equal pay and legislation to counter domestic violence were all driven through Parliament by women.”
Harman is keen to encourage more women to join the Labour Party and to increase membership generally. She is proud that the number of young members has doubled since the introduction of the £1 rate. She also accepts the need for the Parliamentary Labour Party to respond more to members’ concerns and cites the Prime Minister’s plan for Building Britain’s Future, with its emphasis on housing and public services, as an example of how grassroots members have influenced the Government.
There is now a pressing need for a greater number of activists in order to combat the rise of the far right. Harman has come up with a four-point plan, which she is about to present to her Cabinet colleagues. “First, we have to organise. We must be on the phone and on the doorsteps in those areas where the BNP is active. We need to have a physical presence to show that Labour has not forgotten anyone.”
Although Harman talks about focusing on certain areas through regional organisations, she will not commit to allocating additional central funding to constituency parties fighting the BNP in their own areas.
“Second, we have to focus on policy and bring together everything we have done on employment, housing, income through the minimum wage and tax credits. Otherwise, people will be susceptible to the lies of the BNP.
“Third, we need Government delivery targeted in these areas. There is a justification to focus delivery on those communities which feel most neglected.”
Fourth, Harman stresses the need to fight racism. She “strongly backs” legal action brought by the Equality Commission against the BNP over its constitution.
Could the BNP win a Westminster seat at the next general election? Harman grimaces. “It’s the job of all of us to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Harriet Harman’s offices, situated at the end of a very long corridor on the edge of the parliamentary estate, are busier than most. Staffed by a veritable colony of secretaries, advisors and unspecified functionaries, this hive-like atmosphere – with Harman at its centre – can probably be explained by the fact that the boss does not have one job to perform, but three.
On the door, a discreet handwritten sign announces: “Leader of the House of Commons”, but Harman is also deputy leader of the Labour Party, as well as minister for women and equalities.
We meet to talk about Harman’s career-long fight to build a fairer, more equal society, which resulted in the publication in April of the Equality Bill, weighing in at a hefty 250 pages, but first, as Parliament prepares for its summer recess, I ask her for an end-of-term report.
Harman takes a deep breath. “We have been affected by two massive challenges, the like of which come along once in a generation. It is hard to overstate the size of the challenges to which has the Government has had to respond.
“We have had the global economy in meltdown and heading into uncharted territory. When this began, nobody knew where it was going to end. Gordon Brown was clear from the outset that we were not going to do what George Bush did, which was to allow something like Lehman Brothers to collapse. We were never going to let the banks go under. We acted to restore confidence and protect depositors. Second, we were not going to wait and see people lose their jobs – see perfectly good businesses fail and repossessions spiral out of control. That was a major decision and the right decision.”
It was also one that had the “full backing” of the Cabinet, but not of the Conservative Opposition. Harman is at pains to point out that David Cameron opposed the Government every step of the way.
“What we did was a bold, brave and fundamentally important thing to do. If I were scoring the Government’s response to the global economic recession, I would score it very highly indeed. That doesn’t mean that no one is suffering. They most certainly are. Hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs. People are worried. But it could have been much, much worse.”
Harman claims to have figures that show just how much worse it would have been if the Government had followed the Tories’ “do-nothing” policies, but is unwilling to share them.
The conventional wisdom is that Labour has not governed well over the past year. “But we saved Northern Rock and changed the law which enabled us to save the Dunfermline Building Society in a single weekend. We now have the powers to prevent these things happening again.”
While Harman admits some policies have had to be sidelined as a result of the economy’s travails, she stresses that there was no other choice. And unsurprisingly she has no truck with the suggestion that Brown’s excessive borrowing landed us in this mess in the first place.
“When the private sector pulled out of the construction industry, for example, there was no choice but for the public sector to step in. You have to borrow money for the public sector to do that. You can’t increase taxes, because that would mean taking money out of the economy.”
When I ask about her personal highlight of the past 12 months, Harman refers immediately to the G20. “To be part of the team Gordon led to take the whole of the world economy forward – I thought that was massively impressive.
“In terms of my work, it was the publication of the Equality Bill and trying to put things right after the expenses scandal. The public thinks we set our own expenses and then lean on officials in order to make an over-generous interpretation which favours us. We will now put this on an independent footing. We have also been given an opportunity to strengthen the role of Parliament in the future.”
On the Equality Bill, she regards the fact that companies employing more than 250 people will be forced to publish details of their gender pay gap as hugely important. “Transparency is a massive lever for change. As is positive action, for instance when selecting parliamentary candidates to address the under-representation of minorities”
She is well aware that the bill has yet to progress through Parliament. “There is an awful lot of work to do.”
That seems to be a familiar Labour refrain. An opinion poll following the catastrophic European and local elections and before last weekend’s gay pride celebrations (which saw an ungainly scramble among Labour and the Tories to position themselves as the party of gay equality) indicated that Labour is still losing ground to the Conservatives. Five per cent of gay voters in London even voted for the British National Party. Harman is unable to mask her anger or scorn at suggestions that Cameron’s Tories are now the true party of equality.
“The Equality Bill was the only piece of legislation Gordon mentioned at conference last year. I would remind the gay community that the Tories voted against the bill, which requires the public sector to act on its treatment of gay people. The Tories are just against equality. They are making incursions towards gay equality and Cameron tries to trade on his metrosexuality – a kind of detoxified Toryism. It’s nothing of the sort.”
She sees no difference between Cameron and others in his party.
“He is the leader. He takes responsibility for voting for tax cuts for the rich, for voting to allow employers to opt-out of paying the national minimum wage. Have no illusions. When it comes to votes in the Commons, the Tories remain profoundly reactionary.”
It was widely reported that Harman, in her dual roles as Leader of the Commons and equalities minister, was strongly in favour of all-black shortlists for parliamentary selections, yet the idea seems to have been dropped at the last moment.
Not so, says Harman, drawing attention to a short clause in the bill that provides for “positive discrimination” when selecting a candidate. In effect, this leaves the matter in the hands of constituency parties, which “have greater provision to take positive action under the law than there has hitherto been”.
Does this go as far as Harman originally intended? “I’ve always said that we have to take action. If we are to will the end, we have to will the means. It is always the case that you need a consensus within the party and within government. In this case, there was not a consensus within the party or within government to agree to all-black shortlists.”
She makes a comparison with all-women shortlists, pointing out that whereas women were in favour of these, there has been some disquiet about all-black short lists among black and ethnic minority Labour members.
She sees the provision for positive action as a first step, acknowledging that something must be done to increase ethnic representation and indicating that, if this does not work, the issue will be looked at again. She believes new Commons Speaker John Bercow is fully committed to the equality agenda.
Also of vital importance is the number of women in government. Although Harman declines to comment on the recent high-profile resignations of several women from the Government, she says that more women are needed in senior roles – “not because any particular woman has a right to be in government, but because the country needs women in government to deliver for other women. Policies such as Sure Start, equal pay and legislation to counter domestic violence were all driven through Parliament by women.”
Harman is keen to encourage more women to join the Labour Party and to increase membership generally. She is proud that the number of young members has doubled since the introduction of the £1 rate. She also accepts the need for the Parliamentary Labour Party to respond more to members’ concerns and cites the Prime Minister’s plan for Building Britain’s Future, with its emphasis on housing and public services, as an example of how grassroots members have influenced the Government.
There is now a pressing need for a greater number of activists in order to combat the rise of the far right. Harman has come up with a four-point plan, which she is about to present to her Cabinet colleagues. “First, we have to organise. We must be on the phone and on the doorsteps in those areas where the BNP is active. We need to have a physical presence to show that Labour has not forgotten anyone.”
Although Harman talks about focusing on certain areas through regional organisations, she will not commit to allocating additional central funding to constituency parties fighting the BNP in their own areas.
“Second, we have to focus on policy and bring together everything we have done on employment, housing, income through the minimum wage and tax credits. Otherwise, people will be susceptible to the lies of the BNP.
“Third, we need Government delivery targeted in these areas. There is a justification to focus delivery on those communities which feel most neglected.”
Fourth, Harman stresses the need to fight racism. She “strongly backs” legal action brought by the Equality Commission against the BNP over its constitution.
Could the BNP win a Westminster seat at the next general election? Harman grimaces. “It’s the job of all of us to make sure that doesn’t happen.” l
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